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announced a deal to acquire a privately-held real estate investment trust Friday, proving that consolidation in the wireless communications space is not just limited to mobile carriers.

MIP Tower Holdings, the parent of Global Tower Partners, will be acquired by American Tower for $3.3 billion in cash. With the assumption of $1.5 billion in the target's debt, the overall value of the deal rises to $4.8 billion.

American Tower Chairman and CEO Jim Taiclet said GTP has "an outstanding portfolio of tower, rooftop and land assets, which is highly complementary." The company expects the acquisition will generate $345 million in revenue and $270 million of gross margin that will immediately add to profits after the transaction closes.

GTP, which is majority owned by Macquarie Infrastructure Partners, owns and operates about 5,400 domestic towers along with certain property interests and management rights, as well as 500 sites in Costa Rica.

"With all four major domestic wireless carriers engaged in aggressive multi-year 4G LTE deployments, we believe our acquisition of GTP solidifies our path to achieving our strategic goals related to growing [operating profits] over the next five years," said Taiclet.

Friday's deal comes amid a wave of consolidation in the telecommunications space at large. Most recently, and most substantially, agreed to pony up $130 billion to acquire the 45% of its Verizon Wireless segment controlled by British telecom . Previously, agreed to sell a majority stake in its business to Japan's SoftBank.

Those deals prompted analysts at Fitch Ratings to issue a report last week declaring U.S. wireless consolidation is near the finish line, with only one or two dominoes left to fall. One of those, 's T-Mobile, was in 's grasp until that multi-billion dollar deal was scotched by regulators. Now, Fitch's analysts say, it is widely believed that will make a play for T-Mobile after a failed bid to steal Sprint from SoftBank.

Moving forward, Fitch figures, consolidation will be based around spectrum, but deals in the tower space like Friday's are related area that still could have room for more dealmaking. , EA Markets Securities and law firms Clifford Chance and Sullivan & Worcester advised American Tower on the deal. GTP was advised by .